Posted on 12/16/2014 5:02:11 AM PST by HomerBohn
More than two decades after the Berlin Wall fell, it appears that the United States and Russia are engaging in the same sort of proxy wars that were so common during the Cold War. Everywhere that Western and Russian spheres of influence meet there is the potential for conflict, and the two aging superpowers have shown their willingness fight through their neighbors. However, this game of chess has taken on a whole new dimension that is radically different than what we saw during the Cold War.
The whole point of a proxy war is to resist your enemy without actually engaging with him. Once the nuclear arms race began, it became clear that the massive ground battles of World War Two were a thing of the past. If a war starts between Russia and the US, it’s only a matter of time before the conflict escalates into nuclear annihilation. Like the computer says in Wargames, “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.” That makes America’s current actions in Ukraine all the more puzzling.
The Ukraine Freedom Support Act (UFSA) of 2014 authorizes lethal and non-lethal aid. Besides what’s already being supplied.
Including communications equipment. Body armor. Night vision goggles. Humvees. Radar. Counter-mortar detection units. Binoculars. Small boats. Various other gear.
Sniper and assault rifles. Hand grenade launchers. Mortars and shells. Stingers. Anti-tank missiles. What’s known may be the tip of the iceberg.
UFSA legislation “authoriz(ing) (Obama) to provide defense articles, defense services, and training to the Government of Ukraine for the purpose of countering offensive weapons and reestablishing the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine…”
Gone are the days of quietly supplying the Mujahideen with stinger missiles in Afghanistan. I’m sure Russia knew we were helping their enemies in the 80′s, but our government didn’t really make this fact public, and that’s a crucial strategy with proxy wars.
Remember, the goal is to not fight your enemy directly. But on the global stage, making a public statement to harm your enemy, forces your enemy to take action in a public way. They can’t be seen as weak, so they must swiftly return fire for all the world to see. As you can imagine this has the potential escalate quickly, especially between two nuclear armed superpowers. What starts as a proxy war can quickly turn into a real war with millions of casualties. In the words of Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov “Russia will not be able to leave this without a response.”
But the United States hasn’t just made a public attempt to supply Russia’s enemies. They’ve also directly threatened them in subtle ways.
The Pentagon has threatened Russia with redeploying nuclear cruise missiles to Europe, accusing Moscow of violating two arms control treaties.
“We don’t have ground-launched cruise missiles in Europe now obviously because they’re prohibited by the treaty,” said Brian McKeon, principal deputy undersecretary for policy at the Department of Defense.
“But that would obviously be one option to explore,” he added.
It appears that the United States is playing hardball with Russia, when they’re really in no position to do so. Russia’s nuclear arsenal has recently surpassed America’s, and their ability to deploy these weapons has America’s top brass rather worried. Russia is currently deploying bombers, submarines, and ICBM’s that could be just as advanced and stealthy as our own, if not more so.
It should come as no surprise that Russia’s military may be able to surpass our own in the near future, because they’ve kept their priorities straight. While the United States has spent the past 15 years training and equipping its military to suppress low budget insurgencies all over the world, Russia has never stopped preparing its military to fight our own on a conventional battlefield. While we were busy fighting the War on Terror, they caught up to us.
And now the United States thinks it can bully Russia and arm their neighbors. It’s like they think it’s still 1991, when Russia was in free fall mode. Russia isn’t some second rate backwater we can push around. They’re an advanced nuclear armed superpower that delivers nearly half of Europe’s fuel supply, while all we can deliver is a broken military and an economy that is rapidly circling the drain.
They have all the cards, and yet our government continues to poke the Russian Bear with a stick. It should be perfectly clear by now that our government is hell bent on starting World War Three. There will be no more pussyfooting around like the Cold War. Except this time, I don’t think anyone believes that the US will come out on top. Not only are we desperately trying to start a war, we’re practically begging to lose.
The Russian economy is facing hard times but no one expects Russia to back down even if Putin is gone tomorrow.
Won’t happen.
Putin plays full-contact hockey whiel riding bears, while Obola plays T-ball while riding Reggie.
While Russia is indeed a threat needed to be dealt with. The author vastly overstates Russian military capabilities.
This eight-year mistake is part of the reason why the world is in the position it is.
When the United States projects a position of weakness on the world stage, aggressive political actors feel emboldened and step up to fill the power vacuum. We should’ve continued to build missile defense sites in eastern Europe despite the protestations of Russia, but we instead capitulated and gave Russia the Crimea and an increasing foothold in the sociocultural sphere of influence in eastern Europe.
Meanwhile, we’re projecting hostility toward the Israelis who are being battered by Islamists, and we’re losing key strategic political allies in much of the middle East.
This president is more than an abject failure, he’s an enemy of the state who no one will oppose. Obama is the reincarnation of Caesar Augustus sans the military.
Linerals thought the war on poverty was noble and without a draft (well,except for drafting the tax payers)... now they are like disarmed chihuahuas trying to fight wolves.
Yeah, that’s about right.
What's this ? Another NWO/Bilderbergs/UFO/911 was inside job/pray to Putin “news website” ?
The problem is taking them on the head-to-head would require full commitment of our armed forces. As our forces stand we no longer have the capability to fight two large scale conventional wars. In that instance my concern would be China would pursue their interests in Asia while we're engaged with Russia. We wouldn't be in a position to stop them both.
We probably need a global war to match our coming civil war.
Preezy is egging on an internal race war like nothing I have ever seen nor conceived of.
Go 'way, we've seen the best and he hasn' t been around for years -- I mean Victor Posner. He and his subtler Churkin used to prowl the airwaves on ABC news. Churkin is still around somewhere.
loosing control at home
++++
They’ll never loosen control, maybe in ‘17.
Does this bozo write for Pravda? “They have all the cards...” Hardly. They have an economy on the edge of disaster with the decline in oil prices. The decline of our military has more to do with a lack of will to fund any defense than it does with our selection of wars to fight. Russia can and will try to make trouble, but they cannot compete with us if we wake up and get our defense priorities straight. Let’s hope we do so in ‘16.
Lyndon ‘Bird’ Johnson certainly deserves credit for the rapid decent to poverty for the entire nation in order to shovel goodies into the maws of the couch potato generation. He called it the War On Poverty.
Poverty won. Americans lost.
I thought Reggie was mysteriously murdered. Word has it that he did have the word 'Barry' tattooed on his chest, but authorities are mystified over what it means.
I'm more concerned over America's shrinking capabilities and China's increase in military might.
Who believes, if push came to shove, that China would not ally itself with Russia?
AND...the incredible shrinking phony president is taking a meat axe to our incredible shrinking military.
Who among us with functioning brains would not agree with that statement?
Many will keep denying that our nation is not in dire peril, but that the climate is what our minds need to be zeroed in on.
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